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Mother of Olympic medallist Becky James breaks pelvis after she is hit by car while cycling

55 year old only took up cycling to support her daughter on rides

The mother of Welsh Olympian Becky James has suffered a broken pelvis after being hit by a car while cycling.

Christine James, aged 55 from Abergavenny, tweeted a photo following the incident on Thursday morning.

 

She added: "Lucky to escape with only a fractured pelvis and bruised lungs.”

Her daughter Becky won two silver medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Becky retweeted saying: "People, please think once, think twice, think bike!!!! My poor Mumma.”

The BBC reported how Christine had only begun cycling to support her daughter who was riding alone.

She discovered she was good at it, and in 2013 became runner-up in the over-50s category in the National Mountain Bikes Championships.

Gwent Police said it was called to a report of a collision between a female cyclist and a car at about 12:15 BST.

A spokeswoman said: "The female cyclist was taken to hospital to be treated for her injuries which were not thought to be life-threatening."

 

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6 comments

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ChairRDRF | 6 years ago
0 likes

While on the linguistic issue: if the driver was responsible, HE broke her pelvis. She didn't.

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IanMunro | 6 years ago
4 likes

"Im a wee bit confused by all this "it wasnt the car it was the driver" thing..."

It's a general jouranlistic trait that when an incident involves someone driving the a car, the car get's held responsible, but where as if a person is riding a bike then the rider is held responsible.

I.e. you will tend to see written -
"The car lost control on the corner"  and "the cyclist lost control on the corner"
Rather than say  -
"The driver lost control on the corner", or "the bicycle lost control on the corner".  

The first is the linguistic norm in papers but comes with an unfortunate uncousous bias of absolving fault from a driver.  Papers will argue that they are not in a position to accertain blame therefore can't use the form placing blame on the driver. A position however that they don't adopt  quite so rigourously if you are riding a bike.
Once you start noticing the difference, it starts to grate a bit, hence the comments above.

Avatar
ct | 6 years ago
2 likes

Another inanimate object causing damage... Self propelled, self steered I am guessing.

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BehindTheBikesheds replied to ct | 6 years ago
1 like
ct wrote:

Another inanimate object causing damage... Self propelled, self steered I am guessing.

amongst many deflecting tactics used, that the main one is used by a cycle website is piss poor!

Avatar
ChrisB200SX | 6 years ago
4 likes

My girlfriend is from Abergavenny, so we drive in that area occasionally, I have to say when I've seen cyclists there I've been disappointed by how drivers generally treat them.

Glad she has raised the right message rather than the "wear magic hats" tripe we sometimes see after this sort of thing. Hope she makes a full recovery and the driver (and hopefully many more) learns from their mistake.

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1961BikiE | 6 years ago
1 like

Get well soon Christine.

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